Hispania to use Williams gearboxes for 2011

The Hispania team have announced that they are to use Williams gearboxes for the 2011 season onwards. They follow Lotus in moving away from the current supplier to all 3 new teams, Xtrac.

Hispania will use Williams gearboxes from 2011 onwards

Hispania have, along with the other teams of course, suffered many technical retirements this season, and like Lotus, many of these were because of transmission and gearbox failures. Geoff Willis has previously complained about Xtrac’s lack of reliability:

.

"Most of our problems have been related to transmission
hydraulics, which is a complicated part of the car. It
is the first time that Xtrac has been involved as a
supplier of the whole system."

It appears as if Cosworth engines had a role to play in this deal as well. Both teams already use Cosworth engines already, and Williams claim that today’s deal will “extend for the lifecycle of the current Cosworth engine technology”.

This is a good step forward for Hispania to associate themselves with a trusted supplier. Xtrac won a contract from the FIA to supply cheap transmission systems to the new teams this year, but have done themselves no favours by supplying what appears to be very unreliable machinery to Lotus, Virgin and Hispania.

While both Lotus and Hispania have both stated their intentions to move away from Xtrac, Virgin have made no such announcements. Bernie Ecclestone has recently suggested that Virgin is suffering from a lack of investment by Richard Branson, and this may be what is holding them back.

2 responses to “Hispania to use Williams gearboxes for 2011”

This will probably mean that HRT will be on the grid in 2011.
Have you seen the rumours about Bruno Senna joining Lotus next year? History can’t repeat itself like this surly? Ayrton ’84 = Toleman, Ayrton ’85 = Lotus. Bruno ’10 = HRT, Bruno ’11 = Lotus. I can’t see him winning in Australia (Round 2) next year though.

Heard the rumours recently, it’s interesting to see that Lotus would consider dropping an experienced guy like Trulli for Bruno, who still hasn’t proved himself yet. A bit of a risk considering Lotus are trying to make the big leap next year?
As for Australia, you’re right, nearly out of the question!